The present application relates to information management solutions, for example, for organizing access to applications, services, information, and other resources, and for handling cross-functional life and business processes.
Companies have long sought to unify disparate systems and information sources across the entire enterprise. A comprehensive unification process generally involves unifying access to multiple resources, including applications (e.g., Enterprise Resource Planning (“ERP”) applications, invoicing and supply management applications, and data warehouse), services (including Web-based, client-server, and other network services), and information (e.g., stored documents. Internet and intranet information, databases, and knowledge bases). The benefits of unifying such resources include increasing the value of the individual resources through integrated operation, allowing employees to collaborate on projects, and increasing the productivity and efficiency of the entire organization.
The process of unification, however, also creates new problems and challenges. One such problem is information overload: Presented with a barrage of applications and information, users frequently spend a significant amount of time navigating through the information and locating the appropriate applications with which to process the relevant information.
Several solutions have emerged to help users locate the relevant applications, services, and information they need. For example, enterprise portals may help filter resources through the use of roles. In an enterprise portal that implements roles, each user within an organization is assigned a specific role within the organization, and the portal presents the user with choices based on his or her assigned role. For example, a user might be assigned the role of an accountant, and based on that assignment, the enterprise portal would present the user with a choice of bookkeeping applications and relevant information.
Although role-based portals help users locate resources, a user may be assigned to multiple roles, and within the course of executing one particular role, a user is provided access to a large variety of applications and information, several of which may not be relevant to the particular task the user is focused on at the time.
Another concept that has emerged to help users navigate through an enterprise system is Employee Self-Services (“ESS”). Typically built into Human Capital Management (“HCM”) applications, ESS takes the approach that employees are faced with particular human resource (“HR”) events that they need to deal with, and presents employees with specific tasks that they need to accomplish in order to deal with pre-defined HR events. For example, a pre-defined HR event might be a company's annual benefits open enrollment period. In order to process such an event, each employee would be presented with a list of tasks to accomplish (e.g., choose a new medical insurance provider, update the level of life insurance coverage, verify beneficiary information, and so forth). Each task is generally related to a particular application and/or to a specific set of information, and the employee is presented with only those resources that are necessary to perform that task.